Oracle have announced that the last opportunity for existing customers/users to purchase Oracle Primavera P3 and SureTrak licenses closes on 31st December. As of 31st December 2010 all sales of P3 and SureTrak will cease and there will be no further development of these products (including patches). However, technical support and replacement media will continue to be available.
Primavera / Oracle suggest P6 Professional and/or Primavera Contractor as suitable replacements. Whilst these are excellent products and the release of Primavera P6 v8 has added a lot of useful functionality, there’s a quantum difference between an effective project scheduling tool and an effective enterprise scheduling tool.
P6 is an excellent enterprise tool. P3 and SureTrak were some of the best project scheduling tools I have used. I suspect the ending of the P3 era will see other project scheduling tools such as Asta Powerproject and Micro Planner gain market share.
It is impossible to all things to all people and Oracle Primavera has moved decisively into the enterprise management arena. P6 v8’s ability to integrate and manage resources across the enterprise is unequalled. But Enterprise systems need effective enterprise support offices (ie, PMOs) and an enterprise view from the top down.
The power of an ‘enterprise’ tool set becomes unnecessary complications for a single project user, or a user with multiple individual projects each with completely different scheduling requirements. Its horses for courses and users need to understand their needs to select the optimum tool.
In the meantime I will be drinking a toast to end of two old fiend’s careers.
Pat Weaver
Lynda Bourne
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